VAST swathes of South Lakeland, north Lancashire and the Eden Valley are to be considered for designation as National Park status.

The Countryside Agency the Government body charged with looking after rural England is on the verge of engaging consultants to look at the merits of designating an area almost 50 miles long from Penrith to Lancaster as National Park or as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

The area under investigation, which includes the towns of Kirkby Lonsdale, Milnthorpe and Appleby, falls between the current boundaries of the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales national parks and the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), the Arnside and Silverdale AONB and the Forest of Bowland AONB. The area does not include Kendal.

A letter from the agency to National Park bosses in the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales says: "The Agency is about to commission research into the quality and natural beauty of land between the Lake District National Park and the Yorkshire Dales National Parkto help inform a decision about whether the Agency might consider the designation of any of this land as national park or AONB".

The agency expects to see the consultants report by March 2005.

The boundaries of the national parks have not changed since their inception 50 years ago. But the Countryside Agency has just this summer designated the New Forest in Hampshire as the first new national park in Britain for half a century the process took around five years.

Peter Bullard, director of Cumbria Wildlife Trust, described the current situation in this county as: "a very bizarre anomaly from a wildlife point of view."

He said: "We think it would be a very sensible idea. It seems to make so much sense that the boundaries of the designated areas should meet somewhere to recognise the importance of the landscape and wildlife habitat in between.

"There is just as much quality wildlife habitat and landscape value to the east of the A6 as there is to the west. To say that the southern half of the Howgills is worthy of national park status and the northern half is not makes no sense.

"In their new mode, having just created the New Forest National Park, it is logical for the agency to have a look at ironing out some obvious anomalies like this one."

He added that he had little doubt that any consultants would come easily to the conclusion that this landscape deserved designation as national park or AONB.

Peter Stephenson is a director of Kendal-based environmental and landscape planning consultants Stephenson Halliday Ltd.

He told the Gazette that, if the area were to be included in a national park or given AONB status, it would have marginal impact on development in the area as planning policy in the open countryside was already incredibly restrictive.

Mr Stephenson explained that the land in question was already designated as County Landscape in local structure plans. But he said the classification of any land as national park or AONB would confer the highest status of government protection and the conservation of the natural beauty of the landscape would be given great weight in all planning policy and development control.

"It follows that there would be even more restrictive planning policy in that area," he said.

He said householders who found themselves within any new boundary might have more difficulty getting planning permission for large extensions, but said the real impact on the ground would be limited.

Countryside Agency spokes-woman Olivia Assheton said the agency board members had decided to consider the issue following a visit to the area in May this year.

"It is absolutely not the result of pressure from any outside group," she said, and stressed that it was still very early in the process. She said the agency had made no presumption that all or any of the area would eventually become National Park or AONB and that no changes would be made without extensive public consultation.

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